Contra David French on Christianity's Decline

David French, from his current position as a lightning rod, writes a lot about scandal and sin within his own evangelical-Protestant community, in ways that add to the amount of grief that he gets from conservatives who feel like he's directing way too much fire inward at a time when his tradition is embattled and threatened from without. I think French's work on this front is very important, for reasons connected to my specific experience as a Catholic journalist watching the church's scandals unfold, and my general sense that any kind of Christian renewal in the Western world requires serious internal purification in the service of revival. And I wanted to offer that praise and endorsement first, because now I'm going to write about a new piece where I think French's critique of his own community goes astray.